Irish Examiner View: Manhattan haze augurs dark future

A man runs in front of the sun rising over the lower Manhattan skyline in Jersey City, New Jersey, yesterday. Picture: Seth Wenig/AP

Another stark missive from our immediate future landed this week in the form of images of Manhattan veiled in smoke and dust, the familiar cityscape obscured in an orange-red haze.

The effect is not just visual — recent days have already resulted in the worst air quality readings in New York’s history, and footage has shown plenty of people wearing face masks to offset the effects of the dusty air.

It’s not quite accurate to describe the pollution as smog, because it is neither industrial nor car-related. It’s the result of wildfires in parts of Canada, and the fact that those parts of Canada are hundreds of miles to the north of New York City is almost as sobering as the pollution itself.

Unfortunately, the root cause of those wildfires is climate change rather than heedless campers or purposeful arsonists.

The hotter temperatures and drier ground conditions which are caused by climate change combine to create more wildfires, which then result in air pollution irritating the throats and eyes of city dwellers miles away.

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While some may decry the fact that there is more attention being paid to this phenomenon if it affects urban areas, it is only natural to be stunned when city landmarks known all over the world are suddenly almost invisible because of an unnatural and unexpected fog.

How close is this to our own future? Earlier this week, Galway Fire Service spent several hours bringing a wildfire close to the Rahoon Rd on the outskirts of the city under control, but the Canadian cloud over New York was expected to reach Norway yesterday; we may not have to rely on domestic wildfires at all for a similar experience.

Unless we embrace radical measures on climate change, we can only expect more such incidents, and more of our cities to be swathed in a dusty, poisoning fog.

CLIMATE & SUSTAINABILITY HUB